Animation Alley - The Principles of Animation

Hello everybody, and welcome to the Animation Alley. Although
my column is not intended to teach you how to animate, there will
be a lot of information here that you may find useful. This week
I'll go over the famous Twelve Principles of Animation. The
Twelve Principles were conceived during the birth of animated
cartoons. Although they work well when applied to 2D animation,
they must be "revisited" before they can be applied to CG
animation. Now let's get down to business. 1: Squash And
Stretch This is defined as the shape distortion, or
deformation, of an object or character. This is shown in
cartoon-type animations when a ball bounces, or during a
character's take off. In both cartoons (2D or CG) it prevents
things from appearing rigid. Going back to our bouncing ball, the
squash would be used on the landing, while the stretch would be
used during the "up, up and away." On the other hand, if you are
animating a photo-realistic character, the squash and stretch are
seldom used

2: Timing And Motion This is basically the spacing between
actions and the time your character takes to perform that action.
Besides helping you get your timing and overall feel of your
animation correct, it will assist you in producing a sense of
weight. Think of it this way: a human character moves faster than
King Kong, but slower than a little gremlin. 3: Anticipation
Anticipation is the preparation for an action and is specially
needed when it comes to natural organic animation. Take the example
of a jumping character: When the character is about to jump he
first crouches to gain momentum, and then he takes off. The more he
crouches the more the trust of the jump carries. You can have fun
with anticipations in a very interesting way. Anticipation gives
the viewer something to expect. You can fool the viewer by
inverting anticipations and actions, for example, you could make
your character crouch a lot and then make him take a little hop.
4: Staging The definition for this one is: presenting an
idea clearly. To successfully achieve this, you must have the
ability to create strong poses. A strong pose is a combination of
bone structure positioning, framing and camera facing. We will
discuss more about posing in a future article.

5: Follow Through This principle is related to making a
connection between actions and poses. A skillful blending of
actions can produce a natural looking animation. On the other hand,
if you are animating a robot, or any other mechanical character,
you will aim at linear animation, making the character move more
mechanical. 6: Straight Ahead Action And Pose To Pose Action
These two are not actual principles but animation methods. Although
they were created for traditional animation they are also used for
CG animation. Basically, straight ahead action would be the digital
equivalent to "stop motion animation." What you do is move the
character's rig by hand for every frame, just like you would do
in stop motion. The drawback of this method is that you are left
with a countless amount of keys, and editing your animation can
become very hard. On the other hand, pose-to-pose animation takes
advantage of the interpolations that the computer generates between
keys. Unless the animation is tweaked, the final animation will
look linear. Everyone has his own method for animating and there is
no "correct way" to do it. 7: Slow In Slow Out This is
related to the timing and smoothness of the in-betweens. This is
also used to avoid linear animations, or abrupt changes, since they
look unnatural. There are certain situations when you need abrupt
changes in the animation, such as falls and bounces. 8: Arcs
In the universe everything flows in curves, and all organic
movements follow a curve. Look at a baseball player throwing a
ball. If you follow the trajectory of his hand you will notice it
forms a curve. The same is applied to walks, arm movements, head
turns, hips, and such.

9: Exaggeration Exaggerating an action includes actions,
reactions, poses, anticipations, etc. You can change the timing of
the character's movements to make him move faster than normal. You
can add more weight to the action by exaggerating your character's
movements when he tries to move a big box, or any other heavy item
(remembers Lara Croft). If you are approaching cartoon-type
animation then you can use big exaggeration, but if you are
animating photo-realistic characters then you should keep your
exaggerated movements to a minimum.

10: Secondary Action Secondary action is also referred as
"Lead and Follow." This is something like the reaction of a
character, or prop, resulting from another action. If your
character is hit on the face (action) he will stagger (reaction).
If you know anything about physics, you will remember that the
reaction on one object is caused by an external force. To make a
good animation the character must clearly display the secondary
actions that affect his body. 11: Appeal Appeal is creating
animations that people would like to see, and thus, would enjoy
watching. 12: Personality Adding personality to your
character consists of making him act and behave in certain way, and
being consistent with this action. Adding personality to the
character is the most difficult task of a character animator
because not only does the character have to act and deliver his
performance through a digital character, but also try to keep his
character's state of mind during the whole time it takes him to
finish the shot. Well there you have it, the basics of The
Twelve Principles of Animation. In future articles I will delve
into each of the Principles, so be sure to jot down some
questions, and keep an eye on The Renderosity Front Page News for
The Animation Alley! Keep Animating! nemircAnimation Alley is a regular featured
column with Renderosity Staff Writer Sergio Rosa [nemirc].May 16, 2005

nemirc, I agree with Bobasaur, this series will be invaluable:) Good Job.

Teyon ()
posted at 12:00AM Wed, 18 May 2005

don't forget the ability to "read" a character in shilouhette during key frames. Important thing to remember! Great article my friend!

DreamWarrior ()
posted at 12:00AM Wed, 18 May 2005

Excellent article. Great explaination. I've always been afraid of animation. This series will help me understand it so much better. Thank you!

animajikgraphics ()
posted at 12:00AM Wed, 18 May 2005

Let's see more of this Nemirc! Also, anyone wanting to read further, get a copy of "The Animators Survival Kit" by Richard WIlliams - a must have for animators (traditional or CG)

nemirc ()
posted at 12:00AM Sun, 22 May 2005

Hey there Teyon. That silhouete technique will be available on a future article ;) animajikgraphics, I have to agree on the book. It's the BEST animation book out there IMO. Thanks for the comments people.

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